


Babel

by the_moonmoth



Series: Chaos Theory [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional self-harm, Family Reunions, M/M, Mental Health Issues, More than one person is Dramatique, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), The Dowlings Are Terrible Parents, warlock tries to piece together his weird childhood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 00:17:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21382975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: Warlock meets the godfathers. Or: the only way out is through.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Adam Young (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Warlock Dowling, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens), Crowley & Warlock Dowling, Warlock Dowling/Adam Young
Series: Chaos Theory [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1541605
Comments: 375
Kudos: 811





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lo! The much-promised sequel beginneth. Thank you all so much for your unfettered love and enthusiasm for sadsack Warlock and aggressively normal Adam. I know we all know what this sequel is going to be about, and I know some people have certain expectations, so… Please be aware that a) beneath the light-hearted tone there are some very real and difficult feelings, and if your mental health is a little wobbly you should take care <3 esp because b) I will not be updating this quickly, regularly, or on any sort of schedule (at least until the Good Omens Big Bang is over). Sorry. But... enjoy (?)

_ Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. _

_ — Genesis 11:1–9_

**Chapter 1**

Warlock went to bed drunk, weird in the heart, and kind of fizzy in the way that was usually accompanied by long-stem glassware. But he woke up groggy and slow, slapping at his phone like a blind seal until it fell under the bed still squawking at him. Flailing around, he managed to scoop it back up again without leaving the warm cocoon of his duvet, although with the effort involved (and all his first-year-mathmo knowledge of counterbalancing and the principle of moments), it probably would’ve been easier just to get up and get it. Whatever, when had Warlock ever chosen to make things easy on himself?

He finally fumbled the damn alarm off and collapsed back into bed in the abrupt silence. Shit, he was sober now and the memory of last night still made his stomach turn over. It was such a weird fucking sensation, like nerves but… pleasant? Sort of. And it happened every damn time he thought about Adam taking his hand, Adam smiling at him, Adam kissing him. Which was a lot, he was thinking about it a lot.

So there he was, Warlock fucking Dowling, 19 years old, lying in bed grinning at the ceiling like a demented pumpkin over some drunken encounter with a boy with too much hair. Who he was going to see again today, and oh look, there went his stomach again, maybe he should eat something before he tried to interact with other— Fuck, what time was it?

He glared cock-eyed at his lock screen — the clock read just after 10am — and got immediately distracted by a text from Adam.

_Hey! I realised when I got home that you prob don’t have a car, so I’m coming to pick you up. Hope that’s okay!_

Warlock realised with dawning horror that Adam had sent it at 8:03am. He was a fucking morning person. And worse, he’d probably been sitting outside Warlock’s student house for at least an hour.

“Shit,” he muttered, throwing himself out of bed and lurching for the shower. It didn’t even occur to him until afterwards when he was brushing his teeth that he probably should’ve texted back. Not his fault Adam was so committed to being aggressively helpful, though, was it? Having to wait around would serve him right for being so persuasive about the whole thing. Warlock had quite liked the idea of getting the bus to Houghton Highville, anyway. Having had a driver for most of his life, there was something very novel about navigating public transport. And besides that, it would’ve given him ample opportunity to chicken out, because he knew his limits and Sober Warlock had a good deal less desire to meet strangely compelling new acquaintances’ extended family members than Drunk Warlock.

He’d had a plan, was the point, and Adam had gone and… Why was he so _nice_, anyway? Who did that? Warlock had had his fair share of regrettable encounters in a pub after too much cheap lager, and part of him — a pretty large part — was just waiting to regret this one too. Adam being all thoughtful and eager was messing with his expectations.

But there was no denying a lift would be quicker than relying on the rural bus schedule.

*

He gave some serious thought to angsting over his clothes. Then he cursed himself in continuous undertone for being a dramatic little bitch while he pulled on a pair of faded black jeans and a too-short sweatshirt with a too-wide neck that had _100% That Bitch _splashed across the chest in sparkling diamante.

If people were going to make assumptions about Warlock — and people were always making assumptions about Warlock — he’d rather they be the right ones. He repeated that to himself as his fingers tried to curl up like dead spiders into his sleeves.

Downstairs, he grabbed a slice of dry toast and stuffed it in quickly, shoved his feet into his unlaced boots. He walked around the big Amazon box from his parents, still unopened where he’d left it in the hall beside the mountain of junk mail addressed to his absentee housemates, and went outside to meet Adam where he was parked on the road.

The first thing he noticed was the sun shining in Adam’s hair, glinting golden like a crown. The second thing he noticed was that it looked like he was going to continue to be fucking ridiculous over this atrociously ordinary country boy. The third thing he noticed was the disposable cup Adam was holding out to him.

“Coffee,” Adam said, with a bright smile. “Black, three sugars. Probably still hot so be careful.”

Had Warlock somehow mentioned how he liked his coffee last night? He didn’t think so.

“Yeah, uh. Good morning,” he said intelligently. Adam was drinking from his own cup, and made a noise of agreement.

The fourth thing Warlock noticed was that the car, about which Adam had previously waxed lyrical, was in fact a vintage Mini.

“Cute car,” he said, wincing a little at his own tone because he’d meant it to be sarcastic but Jesus not _that_ sarcastic.

Adam didn’t seem ruffled. “Thanks! It’s a 1970, I’ve been restoring it with my godfather.”

Warlock snorted, taking in the chequered roof and go-faster stripes on the bonnet.

“What?” asked Adam.

“Just, you look like you stepped off a farm. A really clean farm. Didn’t picture you as the Classic Mini type.”

“Someone’s grumpy this morning,” Adam said cheerfully. “Get in, he’ll win you over.”

_He?_

Warlock stared at the closed door where Adam had just disappeared, and tried to figure out whether the thing he was feeling was anxiety, a hangover, his own special brand of social discomfort, or a combination of all three.

Adam was a lot to take, sober.

Eventually, Warlock found the wherewithal to go around to the other side and climb in after him.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Not used to getting up this early.”

Adam turned the key and the engine sputtered to life. “It’s almost 11am.”

“Yeah,” Warlock said, slouching down around his coffee. “What’s your point?”

Warlock sat and stewed as Adam drove them out of the town centre. It wasn’t like he wanted to be this way, he just kind of… was. Constantly skirting the painful edge of self-awareness, prone to sadness even on a good day, so fucking soft in the middle, and balling it all up in haphazard hostility because shooting first was the only way he knew, even if it was straight down into his own foot. He honestly didn’t know what the hell he was doing here, how this had happened, why he had felt so good about it last night and was in knots about it this morning.

He desperately wanted to say something, and didn’t have the first fucking clue what.

“Look,” Adam said as he was turning onto the A270. “You don’t have to be nervous.”

“Piss off, I’m not nervous,” Warlock said.

It was a blatant lie. He deserved to get called on it. Instead Adam said, “Okay. Either way, my godfathers are, well, they’re very…”

“Very?” Warlock prompted, not at all reassured. The easy way Adam just— saw through all of Warlock’s jagged edges and bad moods, and then fucking _talked_ about it, as though that were okay— it wasn’t okay. And it was bad enough without an audience. The thought of being peeled open like that in front of people...

“They’re not judgemental,” Adam finally settled on.

“Yeah, well,” Warlock said. “Let’s just say I’m aware I don’t make a good first impression.”

Adam glanced over at him briefly, a smile like the glint of sunlight on a mirror (Warlock wanted to shield his eyes, blink until he stopped seeing purple spots). “You made a good one on me.”

“That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, though,” Warlock said. “There’s clearly something very wrong with you.”

Adam laughed, that same surprised laugh that shone so brightly in Warlock’s memory of the night before. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Yeah?” Warlock said, loosening up a bit. “That I want to hear about.”

“I think there might need to be more alcohol involved for that,” Adam said. “But, you know, it’s not like I’ve got much in the way of evening plans at the moment.”

Warlock avoided having to answer that (and commit himself to interpreting it as Adam asking him out on a date (_another _one?)) by taking a long drink of his coffee. It was perfect, just the way he liked it, which was slightly terrifying, as though Adam had figured that out about him as well, just by looking.

“You have much family?” Adam asked into the silence.

“Oh, you know, the usual. Mum, dad,” Warlock said. “Driver, cook, nanny, gardener.”

He’d been aiming for darkly humorous, but Adam’s eyebrows rose in earnest curiosity.

“You had _staff?_”

“Ugh,” Warlock sighed, realising his mistake. His uni friends all knew about his privileged upbringing and let it be a source of ironic merriment. Warlock let them take the piss out of him for not knowing how to use a washing machine (you _couldn’t_ just use dish soap? Who knew?) on the understanding that he was in open rebellion against not just his parents but his parents’ boss and, while he was at it, their entire way of life. It was a delicate balance, honed over many evenings’ worth of drunken piss-taking and genuine generosity in showing him how the real world actually worked.

Adam didn’t know any of that.

“Yes,” Warlock finally admitted, thinking it might be best to just get it over with all in one go. “I grew up on my dad’s diplomatic estate in Wiltshire, and yeah, it’s exactly what it sounds like, grounds, horses, fleet of cars, the works. I was homeschooled by my nanny, then I went to boarding school when I was 11. Then I came here.”

“I always thought homeschooling sounded kind of fun,” Adam mused. “I didn’t much like going to school myself.”

“Yeah, well,” Warlock said morosely, cradling his coffee like a lifeline. “Pretty sure I drove my nanny away, in the end. I was a little shit. I’m fairly certain they all thought I was the Antichrist.”

Adam breathed out through his nose, too softly to be called a snort, but in that arena. “You don’t look very evil.”

Warlock looked down at himself, arms spread open — black on black on black, with nothing but pasty white skin and _100% That Bitch _to break it up. “You caught me on an off day,” he said sarcastically.

“Me on the other hand,” Adam continued. “I actually _was_ the Antichrist.”

Warlock couldn’t help a strangled laugh at that. “Oh yeah? You look solidly like a glass of milk and plate of hobnobs kind of guy.”

Adam smirked. “That, too.”

“So, what happened?”

Adam shrugged. The smirk dropped away. “I grew out of it. My godfathers helped.”

*

Houghton Highville was exactly as Warlock had pictured it. Pretty, small, full of old cottages covered in rambling roses, Neighborhood Watch stickers in the windows, and a church spire visible above the slate-tiled rooftops. The lane Adam parked on was at the edge of the village and further down looked like it led straight into the South Downs. It was lined on one side by thick hawthorn bushes, with a low stone wall on the other and a little wooden gate which led to the house. It was an old cottage covered in rambling roses, unassuming in its sameyness. Maybe the roses looked a little more abundant.

They went in through the kitchen door, Adam tossing his keys into a little ceramic dish on the work top (it looked like it had been hand-painted by a child, lovingly kept as a keepsake) and yelled “_I’m home!” _like some kind of wholesome, normal-people caricature.

“Oh, good,” came a voice from a nearby room. “Perfect timing, I’ve just boiled the kettle and the table is... set…”

A middle-aged man appeared in the kitchen doorway, white-blond hair, waistcoat, bowtie. Warlock squinted at him. He looked kind of familiar, but impossible to place. Clearly as gay as a fruitbat, though, so Warlock had probably just seen him in one of the rainbow pubs in town. (He thought he would’ve remembered the clothes, because that was a Look, but maybe he didn’t party down in his 1950s Sunday best).

“Adam,” the man said, eyes darting nervously between Adam and Warlock. “You brought a friend.”

“Oh, great,” Warlock muttered, realising horribly where this was going. Adam hadn’t told them he was coming. How fucking squirmingly embarrassing. Warlock’s fingers were already twitching for the door handle, and seriously, Adam, fuck you. But fuck him, most. He knew he should’ve got the bus.

“Yeah, um, Warlock, this is my godfather Azira—”

“Warlock?”

A second man had appeared at the shoulder of the first, a little taller, skinny as a snake, and, huh, weirdly appropriate metaphor because his eyes were yellow and slit-pupiled. All of that registered, yes, but it fell through the cracks under the crashing weight of recognition, because that red hair, that angular frame, the cast of that mouth, not lip-sticked anymore but still so fucking recognisable.

“What?” Warlock said. “What?” He couldn’t get his mouth to say anything else.

In the background, an urgent conversation was happening.

“Adam, what have you...”

“Yeah, so, last night I...”

“... left well enough alone, he was happy. Normal and happy…”

“He wasn’t.”

“What?” Warlock said again. He blinked, tried to focus. The world tunnelled down to those shocking yellow eyes. Distantly Warlock was aware that the man (_Nanny! _his heart screamed, _Nanny!_) was fumbling inside his jacket for something, one hand outstretched in a placating gesture, talking low and quick and quiet (English accent, not Scottish) as Adam continued arguing with the other one. He was aware of that, but he couldn’t make it mean anything.

“What the fuck?” Warlock whispered. And then he stumbled round and left.

*

Warlock had never once been followed after a dramatic exit, and he had a _large_ data set from which to draw. Not his parents, not his teachers, not even Mr. Broome his old headmaster that time Warlock had told him to go fuck himself and promptly run off into the woods around the school for two days. Yelled after, sure. Punished when he finally slunk back in, yeah. Actually followed? No.

But there were footsteps in the lane behind him now, jogging to catch up, so there was clearly a first time for everything.

He didn't know what it said about him that he was actually a little bit happy about it, even if it was the type of happy that wore fangs and made your eyes shoot flame. The type that tasted like the bitter exhilaration of getting to hurl all of his feelings at Adam while they were still in the vicinity of angrily bewildered, and not have to wait to deal with them later when they'd turned into something far more painful.

Still, he forged ahead, hands stuffed in his pockets, head down, hair swinging in his face, not quite able to believe Adam wouldn’t just give up before he reached him. It was a test, it was always a test. How much do you care? How much do you want me? And the answer was always, always _not enough_. So when the hand landed on his shoulder it was the shock more than anything that made him swing around, ready to let loose.

It wasn't Adam, though. It was one of the godfathers, the one who wasn't— the one with the timewarp fashion sense and candyfloss hair.

“Warlock, my dear boy—”

“Excuse you?” Warlock said. “Do I know you? Am I your dear anything? Fuck right off.” And he was about to turn and walk off again when the man said,

“Uh, right. About that. You do, in fact, know me.”

Warlock stared at him. The man gave him a queasy smile.

“I could… I could do the voice if you like, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to change my appearance out here in the middle of the day, and if you’d only come back inside…”

Warlock wasn’t listening. He’d just noticed the ring on the man’s little finger, a pair of golden wings. He remembered that ring, remembered asking about it. _Why does it have wings on? _And the answer, _You must always love and protect all of God’s creatures, young master, but birds are my special favourite. _He remembered, they had landed in his outstretched hand.

He tore his eyes away from the man’s hands, and looked at his face again. The teeth were the big difference, he thought distantly. And the facial hair. But then again up until recently he’d thought his nanny was a woman, so.

“You’re Brother Francis,” he said, and laughed. At least, the sound he made was laugh-adjacent.

“I— I— yes. I was. For a brief time.”

“Brief?” Warlock laughed again. It scraped his throat. “Six years is brief? But, right, I guess it can’t have been that important, since you…” He couldn’t finish. He wouldn’t cry in front of this stranger. But, “Did you ever even think about me? After you left? Did you _ever?”_

“Well,” the man — Brother Francis — the _stranger_ had the grace (the _nerve_) to look ashamed. “You have to understand, it was an incredibly busy— there was so much— we didn’t think—”

And yeah, that was about right. No one ever thought of Warlock.

“Please, come back inside,” the man pleaded. “I know Crowley would dearly like to speak with you, and I—”

“Who’s Crowley?” Warlock asked. Interrupted. Sliced through the man’s fluff and dithering with his objectionable, weaponized self.

“He’s— oh dear, I’m not doing this at all well. You’d know him as Nanny Ashtoreth.”

Warlock didn't say anything, just turned and walked away. “Don’t follow me,” he threw over his shoulder.

“But dear boy, how are you going to get home?”

“I’LL WALK IF I HAVE TO." The words came screaming out of him like a bomb.

Brother Francis was stilled by shock. “There’s a bus stop at the end of the lane,” he said after a moment. “We won’t bother you while you wait, I promise.”

And Warlock shot him one final, furious glare before storming off. For real this time.

*

Warlock figured, later, that he must’ve managed to get the bus home, because he was standing in the hallway of his empty student house. Proof by lack of contradiction. But he didn’t remember a thing about it.

He didn’t feel much right now, either. The interior little part of Warlock that always watched the world with quiet detachment was telling him he was numb from the shock, but that part of him had never been anything more than an observer — no executive privileges, no ability to do anything about it, just a stupid little narrator in his head. _Right now you’re numb from shock, _wow, amazing, what an astonishing revelation. Kudos, brain, you barely-functioning fuck-up.

In the hall with him was the big Amazon box from his parents. He stood there staring for— a long time, probably. Wasn't sure. Didn't care. Eventually he went and got a knife from the kitchen and slit the parcel tape open. Inside was a gift hamper, jars of chutney and mustard, fancy crackers, expensive cheeses and a couple of bottles of wine, all wrapped up in crinkly cellophane. Just what every 19 year old boy dreamed of.

He nodded to himself, darkly satisfied, and climbed the stairs to bed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the time they were clear of it, settled into the new world and their new relationship, years had passed. And Aziraphale… hadn’t thought about how the little boy he had helped raise was getting along.
> 
> Oh, when put like that, it really did sound awful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I warned about long delays. I didn't expect it to be quite this long, though. Lots going on chez Moony; sorry about that.
> 
> Arundel House is the name I’ve been using for the Dowlings’ estate. It’s in reference to the poem An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin, which imo is a very apt description of Harriet and Tad’s relationship.

**Chapter 2**

Aziraphale wasn’t sure how long he stood in the lane watching the slim figure in black stalk away. Something about the jagged elbows, the bowed head, the way the jumper was sliding off a hunched shoulder, made him ache. 

“Oh dear,” he muttered, twisting his fingers absentmindedly. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

They’d royally fucked this one up. Not a massive surprise, given the way the whole thing had unravelled eight years ago, but not one Aziraphale had ever expected to have to deal with. 

What was Adam playing at, bringing Warlock here? He and Crowley had known Warlock was in Brighton, of course they had -- they couldn’t be that close and not know -- but it went without saying that staying out of his life was the best thing they could do for the boy. Just as it always should have been. 

The thing about humans was, they had a remarkable ability to take the amazing -- the truly unfathomable, the divine (or occult), the miraculous -- and wave it away. Categorize it as a figment, or as something misunderstood and mundane, or simply to be left unexplained. And Warlock had been a young boy when they had, well, interfered with him. Aziraphale genuinely hadn’t expected him to have a clear memory of their influence on his life.

Truth be told, he _hadn’t_ thought much about the boy who wasn’t the Antichrist. What with Armageddon to avert, and then his and Crowley’s futures to secure, and then, Lord, those first few years with Crowley out in the open… and then Adam needing them so intensely for a while… by the time they were clear of it, settled into the new world and their new relationship, years had passed. And Aziraphale… hadn’t thought about how the little boy he had helped raise was getting along.

Oh, when put like that, it really did sound awful.

*

Crowley was still in the kitchen when Aziraphale finally found his way back in to the cottage. He was sitting at the breakfast table, one elbow propped on the gingham tablecloth, forehead in his open palm, toying with the arm of his sunglasses with the other hand.

_Let me go after him,_ Aziraphale had said, earlier, thinking he could act the mediator, the least inflammatory of the three options. Now, coming back empty handed, he was forced to admit that perhaps there hadn’t been any good options at all.

“How did it go?” Crowley asked, without looking up.

“Not well,” Aziraphale admitted. 

Crowley made a sound of acknowledgement, somewhere between a snort and a grunt, darkly amused and sympathetic all at once.

“Where’s Adam?” Aziraphale asked, flicking on the kettle on autopilot. “Tea?”

“He’s gone to his room,” Crowley said, just as the muffled strains of Adam’s bebop started up from overhead, Crowley muttering, “ABBA again? Really?”

There was a thoughtful pause as they both considered the song, which appeared to be about the battle of Waterloo. Well, at least the boy was learning some history while working through his emotions.

Aziraphale glanced again at Crowley, slumped at the table as Aziraphale bustled around with mugs, the tin of tea bags, the milk. He hadn’t been wearing his sunglasses earlier, when Warlock was here -- he still wasn’t, but they were right there now, within reach. Aziraphale hadn’t seen them out in the house in, well, in years.

“Are you all right?” Aziraphale asked cautiously. They were a great deal better at communicating out loud than they used to be, but there were still some things Crowley did not like to talk about.

“I’m fine,” Crowley said, clearly not fine.

“Only, you look a little glum, my dear,” Aziraphale tried. The sunglasses being out really wasn’t a good sign.

It was Adam’s doing, that Crowley no longer kept them to hand when inside. Not a bad thing, really, but he could almost see Crowley wrestling with himself over not blaming the boy for whatever was bothering him about it. He was so very sensitive about his eyes, and when Adam had first started visiting with them, it had been… not a point of contention, but…

_“Oh,” Adam said, his small, battered suitcase still in hand. He was fourteen years old and staring at Crowley with that dreadfully unnerving knack he had of looking right through you. “You’re not comfortable with me being here.”_

_Crowley glared. Or rather, Aziraphale knew Crowley was glaring from the cant of his eyebrows, the set of his mouth, but he supposed it would be rather difficult for Adam to know that._

_“Don’t be stupid,” Crowley said._

_“You’re wearing your glasses,” Adam pointed out, sounding very reasonable, but Aziraphale’s mouth wanted to hang open at the audacity of the boy to just… say that._

_“Yes?” Crowley said, making a visible effort not to grit his teeth. “So?”_

_“You shouldn’t have to wear sunglasses in your own home.”_

_And there it was again, Adam’s ability to just strip one bare. Almost absentmindedly. Crowley didn’t like to talk about his sunglasses at all, but if pressed (and with a little bit of alcoholic lubrication) he would simply say that he wore them because they were cool. Adam wasn’t even paying lip service to that polite falsehood. Adam was just cutting straight to the awkward heart of the matter._

_“I’ll leave,” he said then, before either Crowley or Aziraphale were able to assemble a response. Simple and forthright as ever. And possibly just the tiniest bit self-conscious about his welcome._

_Crowley sighed, deflating. “No, all right,” he said, and took them off and tucked them away in his jacket pocket with a sarcastic ‘are you happy now?’ gesture. Despite it all, Aziraphale knew, they really did have an affinity for one another, the mischief-makers in them, and Crowley didn’t exactly mind Adam knowing what he was, after all._

Had there been words about it, Aziraphale wondered. While he’d been out of the house chasing after Warlock? Adam was not usually so mercurial, and had certainly never been the door-slamming, moody teen Aziraphale had initially expected. Something had definitely been said for him to retreat to his own space like that. Hard to know what, though.

He considered all of this as he poured the hot water, stirred in the milk, added the sickening amounts of sugar Crowley would occasionally admit he preferred.

“He asked if we’d ever thought of him, since we left Arundel House,” Aziraphale said quietly as he sat down beside Crowley and placed his mug in front of him.

Crowley dragged the hand propping up his head down his face, before straightening a little in his seat and wrapping both hands around his mug like he was taking strength from it.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I’m afraid I rather fumbled it,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley nodded. Not in judgement, just acknowledging. Aziraphale still felt monstrously guilty.

“Did _you_ ever, you know…”

“Think about dropping by? Saying hello?” Crowley said, not meeting his eye. “Occasionally.”

“Oh my dear,” Aziraphale said, reaching out to touch the back of his hand. “I had no idea.”

“No, well, I clearly _didn’t_,” Crowley said, and there was a note in his voice that Aziraphale didn’t like one bit.

“But you regret it,” Aziraphale observed.

Crowley didn’t answer, just stared hard at the tabletop, in the vicinity of his sunglasses.

Upstairs, a new song had come on, something about God playing dice, which honestly sounded about right.

“Why do you suppose Adam wanted to bring him to us?” he wondered softly.

“Buggered if I know,” Crowley muttered.

“He didn’t say anything, before he, you know,” Aziraphale gestured at the beamed ceiling.

“No,” Crowley said tersely. “He did not.”

*

Adam sat on the edge of his neat little single bed, hands clenching and unclenching in the bedspread, and stared out of the tiny, diamond-paned window to the garden beyond. The glass was ancient, thick as milk-bottle bottoms, but somehow gave a miraculously clear view over the perfect green lawn, the impeccable flower borders, the vegetable patch and the small orchard at the far end that he’d help to plant five years ago.

He wasn’t moping. He was just… reflecting somewhat morosely on how wrong things had gone earlier. Because obviously -- _obviously _\-- he hadn’t intended any of that. 

The thing was, Adam had admittedly always been a little bit curious about Warlock, the boy who’d got his intended upbringing (and vice versa). When he was younger, Adam had occasionally given over some time in idleness to thinking about him, and so he hadn’t noticed it immediately, the little itch, the niggle. But then he’d gone on his gap year, travelled around a bit, actually got to see some of the world he’d decided to save, and when he’d come back to England, suddenly it was noticeable, horribly so, the weight Warlock exerted on Adam’s universe. He was all wrong, a single puzzle piece in an infinite jigsaw that somehow didn’t quite fit anywhere, and given that he, Adam, had assembled that jigsaw himself, it bothered him. He had to try and fix it.

He’d thought it would be pretty straightforward.

But Warlock’s reaction, Aziraphale’s uncharacteristic, blustering affront, Crowley’s… God, Crowley’s face. Adam had expected a happy reunion and an afternoon of catching up around the dining room table. He’d thought, maybe, there might even be tears of joy from at least one party concerned. Instead, there had been Warlock stumbling out punch drunk, and Crowley looking at him with such bleak accusation, voice rocky with the kind of emotion he rarely showed as he asked, “Adam? What the heaven?” And his tone, almost pleading… Adam had bolted for his room rather than try to figure out how to explain himself.

What had he been thinking? Everything had gone so smoothly with actually _finding_ Warlock, striking up a conversation with him, that he’d just kind of assumed today would go the same. Stupid, really. Or just really stupid. He should’ve remembered: nothing to do with fixing people was ever that easy. He’d had that lesson scored onto his soul five years ago.

Sighing, Adam threw himself onto his back, giving in to the desire to feel aggrieved, just for a little bit. So much for good intentions.

He missed Dog. Staring moodily at the sloping ceiling, he gave a brief thought to just… bringing him here by thinking really hard about it. But he felt icky enough as it was without using his powers. So he’d just stay here and listen to music, then, and dwell on his mistakes instead.

*

Dinner was a quiet affair that evening. Aziraphale had had a lovely meal planned -- a traditional roast, Adam’s favourite, with Yorkshire puddings and whatever culinary magic Crowley always performed to get the gravy as thick and smooth as he did. Instead, they were having the leftovers from lunch -- except they weren’t really leftovers at all because no one had touched them the first time around.

At least the finger sandwiches hadn’t gone stale. Aziraphale tended to have that effect on food in his vicinity, whether he intended it or not.

“He said,” Adam started, pushing a mini sausage roll around his plate unenthusiastically. “In the car on the way here, he said he thought he’d driven his nanny away.”

Crowley wasn’t even pretending to eat, hands wrapped around yet another cup of tea (this one generously laced with whiskey, however), staring pensively into its contents, but Aziraphale saw that he glanced up sharply at that.

“You knew I was his nanny?”

“No,” Adam said. “I mean, yes, I must’ve at some point, but you know I can’t hold onto all of that information, after… you know…”

After he’d looked through your very being like a sheet of cellophane, Aziraphale knew he meant. Even for a divine being like himself, riffling through someone’s every thought and feeling could be an overwhelming excess of information. And Adam was human -- most of the time, at least. Probably. His brain wasn’t physically capable of storing that much information, once he’d put his powers away.

“But I meant,” Adam continued, “is it true? Was he really that naughty?”

“No,” Crowley said. “He wasn’t at all.”

Aziraphale gave a small, wan smile in remembrance. At five years old, Warlock had been such a polite, thoughtful child, so good for his nanny, confident and forthright when spoken to, but generally preferring quiet, one-on-one time. As he’d grown older, he’d leaned more towards shyness, solitude and a good book, capable of spending hours poring over whatever Aziraphale could miracle up for him in his old shed. Warlock had never liked to draw attention to himself, found his parents’ functions quite tortuous (something Aziraphale could well understand), and yet, somewhere along the way, he had grown into the kind of young man whose very presence was an eye-catching statement.

“He did get rather, ah, rambunctious after we left the Dowlings’ service,” Aziraphale said thoughtfully. “I rather assumed it was his age.”

“You didn’t think he might’ve been acting out because he missed you?” Adam asked, taking Aziraphale’s chest apart with one simple, incisive sentence.

Crowley stood abruptly, sloshing his tea onto the tablecloth.

“Going for a walk,” he said to the air, and disappeared out of the back door, stopping only to grab his keys from the little bowl Adam had painted for them during his first summer here.

“Crowley, I’m sorry!” Adam called after him, just as the door slammed. “Sorry,” he said again to Aziraphale, looking miserable. 

“I think we’re all a little off balance, dear,” Aziraphale said. “It may take a moment to readjust.”

“I genuinely didn’t think it would,” Adam said.

“Obviously,” Aziraphale observed, failing not to sound, as Crowley so often put it, like a sarky bastard.

“I need to do something,” Adam said, straightening up from his slouch and fixing Aziraphale with earnest blue eyes. Nobody could do earnest like Adam. Earnest and, if Aziraphale were being completely honest, still somewhat unnerving. “Something-- better. Make it right. I need to fix this.”

“Don’t let’s be hasty,” Aziraphale said. Adam rolled his eyes and slumped back with a gusty sigh.

“You always say that,” he muttered. “We’re not all immortal, you know. Some of us are working with a time limit, here.”

“Hmm,” Aziraphale said, noncommittally. That remained to be seen. “Listen, Adam,” he said, wondering how to say this delicately. “Is it possible… Do you think you might be… rushing into something here?”

“What do you mean?” Adam asked with a frown.

“Well, you haven’t been back all that long, and you haven’t spoken about it at all. Is it possible there’s something… something you’re avoiding by running headlong into a new project?”

Adam went very quiet, and looked away. Aziraphale sipped his tea and waited patiently. A year ago, when all of Adam’s childhood friends had been getting ready to go to university, bright eyed with the promise of the future, Adam himself had decided to defer his entry to go travelling instead. A _gap year,_ the young people were calling it these days. Not a new idea, exactly, and not a bad one, necessarily, but also not a solution in and of itself. Adam had come back a few weeks ago, tanned, older, more thoughtful, but with no more direction in his life than when he’d left. Put simply, Aziraphale feared that this thing with Warlock was nothing but a distraction from such questions as what exactly Adam was going to do with the great and terrible power he possessed and the mortal life he had given himself.

Not that Warlock didn’t deserve an explanation or two. But intentions mattered, especially for beings like them who could warp reality to suit them when they weren’t paying attention.

“I rather think,” Aziraphale continued gently, “that Warlock has suffered enough from supernatural forces meddling in his life for their own ends.”

“It’s not…” Adam started, before trailing off, an uncharacteristic show of uncertainty. “It’s not like that,” he continued quietly. “Something’s wrong. He’s not happy. And I… I like him, Aziraphale. He’s funny and way smarter than he gives himself credit for, and he deserves to be happy.”

_Oh_, Aziraphale thought. He dabbed at his mouth with a serviette before responding. 

“In that case,” he said carefully, “it’s not just you, dear boy. I think we all have a role to play. And perhaps… a little communication this time?”

*

Later that night, once the summer sky had finally faded to the velvety black he so adored out here in the country, Aziraphale sat alone in bed, book open but unread, and considered Adam Young. A touch shy of six feet tall, as golden-haired and blue-eyed as the day he’d come from hell in a handbasket, he was the kind of skinny that had just recently become more lithe than knobbly, in the midst of that heated, uncomfortable, exciting straddle between childhood and what came after.

The thing about Adam, though, the really important thing, was that he _seemed_ human. Every sense Aziraphale possessed, both mundane and divine, told him that the boy was completely normal. But the fact of the matter was, he wasn’t normal at all, he was in fact very odd in a way that defied explanation. It was almost as though, that day on Tadfield airbase when Adam had rewritten the world, he’d remade himself into a normal human boy on this plane, and somehow shunted his supernatural powers onto another one just out of human sight. Like Crowley and Aziraphale did with their wings. And like their wings, Adam’s power could be drawn back onto this plane at a moment’s notice, without warning, and sometimes even without his instruction.

That had been a problem for a while.

A soft sound on the stairs shook Aziraphale from his reverie. The bedroom door, which he had left ajar, was nudged open with a gentle creak, followed by a sound like fabric being dragged across the floorboards.

“Hello, darling,” Aziraphale said as Crowley slithered up onto the bed beside him. Without a word, Crowley slid under the covers and curled up, cool scales draped across Aziraphale’s lap. Aziraphale smiled to himself. Crowley wasn’t a small snake, but it wasn’t as though Aziraphale actually _needed_ circulation in his extremities. And besides, experience had taught him that Crowley would be human again by morning, draped warmly across him, darling and affectionate, and hopefully, ready to talk.

Aziraphale put his book aside, turned off the bedside light, stroked the smooth, scaly head that was resting on his stomach, and endeavoured to think no more tonight.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’ve just repeated the cycle,” Crowley said, glad his face was buried in Aziraphale’s chest so that he wouldn’t have to acknowledge the crack in his voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for bearing with the long wait. I'm very happy to be working on this fic again <3

**Chapter 3**

The boy was sleeping when Crowley got there.

Well, not a boy anymore. It was easy to forget how the passage of time could affect humans. Only eight years since he’d last seen Warlock, and suddenly he was no longer a child. Part of Crowley was still wondering how that had happened, but it seemed pretty stupid under the circumstances.

He’d only come to make sure Warlock got home safely. He hadn’t intended to let himself in -- he might be a demon (retired) but he generally had better manners than that. But once he was there, the draw of a sentimentality he would deny to his dying breath brought him through a house that smelled of processed food and old carpet, up the stairs to Warlock’s bedroom.

It was sparse, even more so than the average student room tended to be, the bare minimum of furniture, decorated mostly in shelves of textbooks and ring binders, and a collection of mugs displaying an almost perfect progression of crustiness. Clothes littered the floor and the desk chair was buried beneath a pile of unfolded laundry, so Crowley perched silently on the edge of the desk instead. He could go completely unseen, when needed, but it was obvious that that wouldn’t be necessary right now. Warlock was in a dead sleep, a heap of skinny limbs on his single bed.

He looked… he looked exactly as he had as a boy, tucked in neatly by Crowley at bedtime only to throw his limbs out every which way in sleep. He remembered the number of times Warlock would call out for him in the night, still mostly asleep but cold and too tangled in the bedding to right himself. His hair was longer now, more unkempt, as though he’d been putting off a haircut, and the skin beneath his eyes was smudged with eyeliner. He was still fully dressed. But yeah, all that aside, in the bleak, muted light of Warlock's bedroom, the years just somehow fell away.

Thing was, whatever Crowley’s personal feelings about it, he had been the one who’d loved the boy, functionally -- held him though fevers, soothed him after nightmares, put plasters on his scraped elbows. Whether or not it had all been an act, Warlock’s parents had been… distant was a polite way of putting it. Disinterested would be more accurate. More interested in the symbolic status of Child and Family than in that child’s personhood. So Crowley had always been the one Warlock turned to, for love. For security. And that was fine; that was as expected, and actually quite helpful for the task he’d assigned himself. But Crowley hadn't ever been able to allow himself to reciprocate, because always in the back of his mind was the backup plan that he'd eventually voiced to Aziraphale, that one of them (not him, of course not him, but someone) might have to deal with the boy. Terminally.

How could you love the thing you knew full well you might one day have to kill? 

And yet--

And yet Crowley had been checking in on him. Not face to face, of course -- he'd agreed with Aziraphale that they should keep their worlds separate. But just… looking in. Now and again. Now that they were living close by. How did you explain that?

Crowley swallowed, and scrubbed a hand down his face. Wrapped it with the other around himself a moment later.

He couldn’t get the sight of Warlock’s face out of his mind, when he’d seen Crowley’s eyes for the first time.

It was early, still, the sky holding onto the light of a not-so-perfect summer day. Crowley watched over Warlock until long after the stars came out.

*

In the morning, Crowley awoke draped across Aziraphale in their bed, human-shaped once more, and not at all ready to talk about it. Sadly, Aziraphale had never really got the hang of sleeping, and so he knew immediately that Crowley was awake. Thankfully, he _had_ learned to give Crowley a grace period before launching into a full on conversation. And so Crowley lay with his cheek on Aziraphale’s warm chest, his own body rising and falling with Aziraphale’s breath, staring morosely at the join in the curtains where they didn’t quite meet and mildly resenting himself for enjoying the gentle fingers wending their way through his hair.

“Went to Brighton,” Crowley said eventually. Aziraphale hadn’t actually asked yet, but sometimes it was better to get a jump on these things, direct the action.

“Did he make it home all right?” Aziraphale asked. No need to clarify which ‘he’ they were talking about.

“You blessed his journey, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did.”

“Then you already know the answer.”

There was a pause, the fingers pausing, too. “But you went anyway.”

Crowley’s throat was aching. He took a breath to try to clear it. “Just to make sure. He was fine. He was asleep.”

Aziraphale hummed noncommittally, and Crowley scowled into the soft blue cotton of the angel’s pyjamas. Of course they both knew that sleeping didn’t necessarily equate to emotional health. Sometimes Crowley hated this whole being-known thing that came with loving someone out in the open.

(Lies, he wanted every moment of it, even when it was hard. Aziraphale had always been worth it.)

“I had a chat with Adam while you were out,” Aziraphale continued after Crowley’s silence had stretched on a little too long. “He’s agreed to keep us in the loop from now on.”

Crowley made a noncommittal noise.

“You said you regretted losing touch with Warlock,” Aziraphale said, prodding gently without actually asking anything. “We have to do right by the boy, of course, but perhaps this is also a chance to… relieve some of that remorse.”

And that was… that was a tangled knot of blood and sinew. Because yes, he did want to see Warlock, actually, despite the weight pressing on his chest whenever he thought about it, but Crowley also knew what it was like, when the person who raised you was the same person who at the back of their mind knew they might one day destroy you, and then ultimately walked away and abandoned you to your fate. And you were, what? Supposed to feel grateful for that? Get over it, ever? Shrug your shoulders and say hey, no hard feelings, welcome back to my life? There was no doubt in Crowley’s mind what his own reaction would be in that situation.

And lying warm and safe in Aziraphale’s arms only sharpened the guilt.

“Aziraphale,” he said softly. “We both know some things aren’t forgivable.”

Draped over him as he was, Crowley was acutely aware of the tiny hitch in Aziraphale’s breathing, the way his arms tightened a little around Crowley in response. 

“Perhaps,” Aziraphale said carefully, even though Crowley knew he generally preferred to believe the opposite. “But I think, on reflection, we should give young Warlock the chance to make that decision for himself, this time, rather than assume we know best.”

And yeah, that hurt, that was definitely another way of looking at it. He’d seen human families get stuck in a repeating pattern of stupid, damaging behaviour over and over, but he’d never considered that he… that they...

“We’ve just repeated the cycle,” he said, glad his face was buried in Aziraphale’s chest so that he wouldn’t have to acknowledge the crack in his voice.

Aziraphale’s hand stilled in Crowley’s hair again as he considered this. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he said. There was a slight tremble to his voice as the weight of that awful realisation sunk in. “But my dear, when given the opportunity to break out of that cycle, shouldn’t we at least try to take it?”

Crowley couldn’t find anything to say in response to that, and so he shut his eyes, and devoted his energy into resisting the impulse to turn back into a snake. 

*

Warlock didn’t remember going to bed. He barely remembered getting home. If he was honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what day it was, or how many times he had already woken up, gotten up, only to fall back into sleep a short while later. But this time had an unfortunate clarity to it that seemed to suggest it would stick, at least for a few hours, and when he rolled over, grey and a bit blurry still, Adam was there.

He should be surprised, shouldn’t he? Waking up to find someone in his room he hadn’t invited to be there, watching him sleep like a big creeper -- that was generally considered less than ideal, right? But Warlock’s effort to dredge up some kind of reaction was half-hearted at best, because actually, he just didn’t give a fuck.

Adam was sitting in the rickety little desk chair, elbows on his knees and golden head bowed. Warlock couldn’t quite see his face from this angle but there was no mistaking that godawful mac. He yawned, and Adam raised his head, sitting up straight when he saw that Warlock was awake.

"I'll leave if you want," Adam said quickly, holding out his hand placatingly as though Warlock were a scared animal. Then he paused, waiting for a response. When Warlock just blinked at him, he sighed. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't handle that well, at the cottage."

"_You _didn't?" Warlock croaked. Or at least, that's how he tried to say it. In fact, it came out completely flat and inflectionless, and so sounded rather more damning. He struggled into a more upright position, curling his legs beneath him but still piled under the duvet. Adam silently handed him a paper cup of coffee, and Warlock didn't know what to do with that aside from take it. He took one sip (it was still hot and just as perfect as the first one) and then put it aside. 

Then he noticed the rest of his room. His floordrobe had been tidied, clothing folded up in slightly haphazard piles on his desk, and all the crusty mugs and dishes had been removed. Warlock looked at Adam, trying to find the energy to form some kind of question, and Adam gave him a mildly sheepish smile.

"My mum always makes me tidy my room when I'm in trouble," he said. "Guess it's just an impulse at this point."

"Ha," Warlock said. It came out just as flat as before. “Why exactly are you here?”

Huh. Maybe he did care, a little. He reached for the coffee again. It was good. Warming.

“I thought I owed you an explanation,” Adam said.

“Oh,” Warlock said. Something he had previously been too shocked to consider slotted into place. “So you knew.”

Adam sighed, and slouched back into the chair, one foot kicked out, arms crossed loosely over his chest. “Yeah. Sort of. I knew that you knew my godfathers. I thought it would be a nice surprise to get everyone together again.”

“Did you? Think?” Warlock asked placidly, distantly satisfied at the look of remorse that fell over Adam’s face.

“Obviously not enough. Warlock, I am really, really sorry. I didn’t realise how much it would hurt everyone.”

_Everyone_, Warlock noted absently. Not just him, then. How nice.

“That’s it, then?” he asked. “You done?”

“Oh, do you have plans today?” There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in Adam’s tone, but Warlock couldn’t help reacting.

“No, that was my polite way of telling you to piss off.”

The corner of Adam’s mouth twitched, like he was trying really hard not to smile. “I absolutely will, if that’s what you want, but there’s a lot more to all of this than you know, and I thought you might like to hear the whole story.”

Warlock took another draw from his coffee and considered this. Did he really want to know _why_ he’d been abandoned? At this point he was fairly certain he was just objectively unlovable. There were only so many times life could teach you that lesson and you _not_ take it on board, after all. What good would it do, knowing? Nothing. No good whatsoever. It’d just hurt, and he did not need any more of that.

Maybe he wanted it, though. Call it masochism, or poking the bruise, but some part of him had never grown past that eleven year old boy, quietly crying himself to sleep beneath the bed covers, begging to understand.

Besides, he felt pretty impervious right now. Might as well.

“Fine,” he said. “But go and wait downstairs like a normal person while I get dressed.”

Adam’s smile was brief, but bright as a biblical cloudburst.

*

Warlock finished the coffee and propelled himself through a shower by force of sheer mindless routine, and when he was dressed in loose tracky bottoms and an oversized jumper that was fraying at the cuffs, he had to admit he felt a lot more human. 

The jury was out on whether that was a good thing or not.

He found Adam in the kitchen, futzing around with the toaster. On one end of the kitchen table were two steaming mugs of tea. At the opposite end, the pieces of a broken china teacup had been tidied up from the floor and neatly piled, red and orange roses in jagged little pieces. The sink was empty of dirty dishes, not a crumb in sight on the worktops.

And there was a moment, just before Adam turned around, when Warlock’s chest and his skull and his whole bloody _being_ ached with longing. To see someone as luminous as Adam in his shitty little kitchen with the formica worktops and lino floor that had turned sticky with age, tidying up like he was completely at ease just doing whatever the hell he pleased in there, like he belonged...

“Here,” Adam said, sliding a plate of buttered toast onto the table beside one of the mugs, breaking the fantasy. “Eat this, you’ll feel better.”

And because he so desperately wanted Adam to _fix this, _Warlock gave him a withering look and reached for the tea instead. He did concede to sit down, however.

Adam sat opposite, hands wrapped calmly around his own mug, and gave Warlock a clear-eyed look. 

“Do you remember what we talked about in the car the other day, about being the Antichrist?”

Warlock snorted. “This where you tell me you have a destiny to grind the armies of man beneath your heel?”

Then he frowned. Those words… weren’t his own. It was like he’d memorised them long ago, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember when, or why, or where they came from.

The look Adam was giving him was almost encouraging. Warlock’s frown deepened.

“Slightly over 19 years ago,” Adam said. “A baby was born in a convent in Oxfordshire, just outside the village of--”

“Tadfield.” A cold shiver went down Warlock’s spine, and he sat back instinctively. Suddenly the amusing coincidences they had discovered in the pub didn’t seem so harmless anymore. “Have you-- did you _research_ me?”

“No,” Adam said. “The baby was me.”

“No, wait,” Warlock said. “We have the same birthday. We were both born in Oxfordshire. We weren’t… we weren’t...”

Adam gave him an apologetic look. “We were -- that bit of our story is the same. Same day, same place, but you-- you came from human parents and I… didn’t.”

“What, you were dropped off by aliens?” Warlock snapped, but was wholly unprepared for Adam to elaborate:

“Brought up to Earth from Hell by a couple of demons, actually.”

“Uh huh, okay,” he said, and started to rise from the table.

“Wait,” Adam said. “Please. I know it sounds stupid, but-- remember Crowley? You saw him at the cottage without his sunglasses on.”

Warlock did not remember ‘Crowley’, but from context his mind supplied an image. “Tall ginger bloke, used to go by Nanny?” Warlock said bitterly.

“Yes. You saw his eyes.” It wasn’t a question, because of course Warlock had seen his eyes. Hadn’t been able to unsee them since. Striking yellow, so bright they were almost luminescent, with the slitted pupil of a cat, or a snake.

“My therapist said I’d imagined it,” Warlock said, stuck for a moment in a stuffy wood-panelled office with a ticking clock. All those times he’d caught sight of Nanny’s eyes over the rim of her lenses, or from the sides. She hadn’t always worn them around Brother Francis either, he remembered, and Warlock had surprised her once or twice, in the kitchen or the gardener’s cottage, a quick glimpse before she could fumble her sunglasses back into place. He hadn’t questioned it at the time, just like he hadn’t questioned why he lived in a mansion with a butler and had his own horse. But later… He sat back down and looked at Adam. “Why are they like that?”

“He’s a demon,” Adam said simply. “He can change his appearance, turn into a snake. His eyes are the only thing he can’t--” he stopped abruptly, as if realising that was perhaps information he shouldn’t just give away. “And Aziraphale -- uh, Brother Francis -- is an angel.”

Warlock laughed. He couldn’t help it. He laughed until his stomach hurt. It had very little to do with joyfulness. “Go on,” he said. “Tell me the rest. This is going to be _brilliant._”

*

Several hours later, Warlock was still sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, only now, it was the broken china teacup he was drinking from. Not broken anymore. Adam had mended it. One moment, it had been a pile of broken chintz on the far end of the kitchen table, and the next, it had been whole. As though Warlock had never smashed it, never sat on the peeling lino sobbing over the shards. _I thought you’d need proof_, Adam had said, and sure, yeah, seeing was supposedly believing (despite the way his brain continued to try to rationalise it) but actually the whole damn thing made a dark kind of sense, and Adam performing literal goddamn magic in front of him somehow seemed like the least of it.

And at the same time, Warlock didn’t want to think about it. He just didn’t. He couldn’t. It was too much, too fantastical, too weird. He prided himself on being the sarcastic, grounded pessimist that he was. Fairytales were for children and adults who still acted like children. He’d had his head in the clouds once; he had made himself distinctly Earth-bound, since. But what Adam had said, it ripped something open in him. Not disbelieving, exactly, but deep, and intensely vulnerable. And Adam, the literal Antichrist apparently (no-- just goddamn _not right now_) was so fucking matter of fact about it all, just laying it out like any old piece of unremarkable history, that Warlock wanted to shake him. Wanted to cry. Wanted none of this to have happened so they could go back to holding hands and flirting awkwardly in stale-smelling pubs and vintage minis.

Oh right -- that was one thing he _did_ actually have questions about right now.

“So it was all an act to get me over there, right? To your g-- to the cottage?” Warlock asked, his voice rubbing his throat like sandpaper. “You never--” He couldn’t finish.

The confirmation would hurt, but better to get it through his own thick skull now rather than keep up with this pathetic mooning.

“No, I— Listen,” Adam said, making an aborted little movement with his hand like he’d wanted to reach across the table to Warlock but changed his mind, which was frankly fascinating because it was the first time Adam had ever appeared less than fully confident in himself. He gave Warlock a look instead, and it was like lifting up a rock to find the writhing mass of life beneath. Warlock’s breath stuttered in his lungs at the sheer organic shock of it, but it was gone again by the time he’d even managed to finish pulling in air, the solid, impassable exterior set back in place.

“I knew who you were, and I came here to find you, all true,” Adam said calmly; Warlock thought he could see now that it was studied. “But I didn’t…” his eyes slid away, losing the facade again almost instantly. Amazing. “I didn’t expect to like you as much as I did,” he said quietly, glancing back up at Warlock, eyes huge and blue, and _hurting_. Warlock could recognise that like looking in a mirror, even if he didn’t understand it. “Very few people surprise me,” Adam said. “Part of the Antichrist package. But you…”

Warlock’s fingers curled up into his frayed sleeves like dried plants as he sat blinking at Adam. He wanted to believe that. Intensely. And in a very twisted way, that felt worse than believing he’d been duped.

“It’s late,” Adam said then, making to get up. “I should give you some space to think.”

“Are you going to come back?” Warlock asked quickly. He didn’t know where the words came from, or what he wanted the answer to be, still stuck on that _look_, and absolutely fascinated in spite of himself.

“Do you want me to?” Adam asked.

_Yes_, Warlock wanted to say. Didn’t want to say. Wanted someone else to make the decision for him. He shrugged, looking away.

"Well, text me if you do,” Adam said, slowly getting to his feet. Warlock rose with him, if only to make sure he actually left. "Unless that date is still on the cards."

“What date?”

“The one you didn’t agree to, in the car. My evenings being empty, alcohol being required. That date.”

Warlock snorted out a laugh. Adam's optimism was very funny. Really.

"Yeah, no chance," he said. 

He realised a moment later it’d been a joke, a bad one -- Adam gave a self-deprecating smile that was still palpably sad around the edges, and Warlock hated himself for hating that.

"It's going to take me a while to trust you again," he added before he could think about it too hard.

_Again_ hung in the air between them.

"So that means, I could try to earn it back?"

"Don't push it," Warlock muttered. Then, staring at his socks and thinking of Adam in his kitchen, "Yeah."

He didn’t look back up to see if Adam was smiling, but he felt the sunrise warmth of it nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little update as of 3/23/20 if you're wondering where the next chapter is [over on my tumblr here.](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/613405039493595136/little-update-on-my-life-which-i-will-also-link)


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